Thursday, April 23, 2009

Hamas Tactics in Gaza

It's a look at how assymetrical warfare is practiced in the major leagues. The tactics are not all that dissimilar to those practiced by the moojies in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Hamas and Hezbollah have been far more successful in exploiting a gullible media for their ends.

The best way to short-circuit this is by getting first-rate, actionable intelligence. Intelligence that informs surgical but violent offensive action maximizing the element of surprise. A predator or airstrike against a Hamas leader as he's driving through the countryside is the ideal.

But at some point, you have to get in there and root out the launchers and missiles and take the fight to the mortarmen and Hamas fighters where they live.

Israel has an extremely tough tactical problem to solve, with no good solutions - a testament to the skill, but also the ruthlessness and inhumanity of Hamas's leaders.

That said, watching the video, I kept asking myself: "would you like to know more?"

What do you do when your enemy uses your own civilized behavior as a weapon against you? You end up with a choice of losing your civilization by losing the war to the barbarians, or by abandoning civilization in order to win the war. Catch-22.In my mind civilization is not a suicide pact.